aBrian Festa 10-23-00 Midterm Assignment Mon. 12:20-3:00For my interview, I interviewed a woman by the name of Mrs. Miskell. She is a close family friend and also teaches at the elementary school that I used to attend. Mrs. Miskell has been teaching for fifteen years. She has a class of 21 including 2 special education children who are mainstreamed into her class for a few areas of study. She team-teaches one day a week with the remedial math teacher, and one day a week with the remedial reading teacher. Her children switch classes with one other class for social studies and science. In this interview, I covered her views on special education and security in today’s schools. The first subject that I talked to her about was special education. She believes that special education students should be mainstreamed into the classrooms, with modifications if they were to get out of control. It has a lot of pluses, with minimal minuses. In her classroom, her children are learning to use sign language to communicate, because one of her special ed. students is deaf. She also has a mentally retarded child, and the “normal” children help Mrs. Miskell in the classroom with this student. They pretty much lead this student around the classroom when they have something to do. The children include her in everything, which makes her feel like she’s part of the group. Mrs. Miskell enjoys watching these two students interact with the rest of her class, because she can see that these two students feel so good about themselves. She can see that the rest of the class accepts them as people.I agree with Mrs. Miskell that special ed. students should be allowed into general education classes for part of the day. It is a really good idea to mainstream these children into a normal classroom situation. The special ed. students get a grasp of the normal world and what is right and wrong. They learn to interact...
